Each poem (below) is extracted from a page of text
from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Nature, Penguin Classics edition.
This project is a work in progress.
Page 35
Why not
invite
the past
out of its fields?
Page 36
We dispute and hate the truth
only as
confusion of thought.
Page 37
From heavenly touches:
the sublime!
Stars appear.
Page 38
Charming poet,
Speak truly of the heart.
Wild delight runs through me,
in my thoughts of a man.
Page 39
bare,
transparent,
and
uncontained.
i produce
a
necessary
melancholy laboring under contempt.
page 40
Our senses,
like childish delight:
Angels/beasts at play.
Page 41
The wind waits for the diminished friction of man,
like an aggregate of the world changed.
But there is no obvious good.
Page 42
Plastic integrartes the landscape-
so foul, and
sort of,
(almost)
agreeable.
Page 43
I see the spectacle of the sunrise:
ridiculous dawn-
refome me!
Page 44
The attentive expression,
like purple and gold tinsel:
It shines!
Page 45
O graceful, heroic, rational creature!
All virtue is under the shadow
of the purple mountains of great deeds.
Page 46
So glorious-
sitting by his side,
arms embrace,
happy.
(How easily he took with him
the day
and became a thought.)
Page 47
Does all good delight?
This love is:
content,
admiring,
abstract,
different,
even unique.
What is that totality?
Nothing is whole.
Each work to satisfy,
stimulate desire.
Page 48
Words
use
us.
Page 49
Love is a beautiful influence.
It is the blue sky of reason.
Page 50
Facts marry history
and plant the seeds of pathos.
Page 51
Page 52
Page 53
We are [metaphor].
Page 54
There sits necessity:
love will purge sense.
Page 56
What annoyances,
inconveniences, dilemas-
what reckonings of interest!
Debt and credit.
each
the fortune
of the other.
Page 57
Page 58
Delicate persuasion
reduces the sensible to the spiritual.
Page 59
Sentiment is the azure sky
of stormy affection.
The endless variety of things
makes all things the same.
Page 60
There is not a universal truth, however absolute it is.
Page 61
Dumb idea:
intercourse with a friend.
Page 61
It appears
That I have found myself!!!!
Unfortunately defective,
nevertheless pleasant:
like adolescent intercourse.
Page 62
He is sweet,
And my soul is yawning.
Page 63
Like a ship to be tossed
we are afloat.
Page 64
Wonderful culture-
emancipate us,
please us,
amuse us.
Page 65
The spectacle
arises a pleasure,
like a suspicion awakened.